16-year-old Tom Holland delivers an Impossible' debut

If you were making a list of the best screen debuts in Hollywood history, you’d probably want to include Robert Duvall in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Julie Andrews in “Mary Poppins,” Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween,” Kate Winslet in “Heavenly Creatures” and Barbara Streisand in “Funny Girl.”

Now, you can add the name of 16-year-old Tom Holland to that list.

In “The Impossible,” which opens on Friday, the British teen delivers a performance of startling maturity. His accomplished turn is all the more remarkable given the challenging nature of the movie, which depicts the 2004 tsunami which killed more than 230,000 people and caused more than $10 billion in damage.

The son of a British comedian Dominic Anthony Holland, Tom says he spent the first week on “The Impossible” trying to figure out what he — and everyone else — was doing.

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“I was asking constant questions. But the most helpful thing to me was (co-star) Naomi Watts, who was like my mom on set and off. I knew as soon as I met her that I was in safe hands.She would never hesitate to give me advice, and help me out.”

Needless to say, Holland was a quick learner. He’s already netted an award from the National Board of Review for Best Breakthrough. A Best Actor Oscar nomination is a possibility even though the category is already crowded with likely contenders, including Daniel Day-Lewis (“Lincoln”), John Hawkes (“The Sessions”), Bradley Cooper (“Silver Linings Playbook”) and Hugh Jackman (“Les Miserables”).

“The Oscar talk is very scary,” says Holland. “I don’t want to let myself think about it in case it doesn’t happen. But there’s a little corner in the back of my brain saying, ‘It could happen.’ But it’s a privilege to even be considered alongside those other incredible actors.”

“The Impossible” is the true story of a Spanish family, the Alvarez Belons, who arrived in Thailand just in time for the Christmas holidays in 2004. On the morning of Dec. 26, 100-foot waves engulfed their hotel, separating Maria (Watts) and her oldest son Lucas (Holland) from her husband (Ewan McGregor) and younger sons (Oaklee Pendergast and Samuel Joslin).

The sequence in which the tsunami hits is among the year’s most harrowing. When the film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, at least two patrons fainted as they watched the disaster unfold.

To recreate the event, director J.A. Bayona (“The Orphanage”) had to rely on six different special effects companies. Working in unison, the effects whizzes spent more than a year completing the 10-minute scene.

In the aftermath of the tsunami, the water, literally, swallows and bashes Maria and Lucas around. As they dodge debris, they’re eventually forced to cling to a palm tree to survive.

It took about six weeks to shoot the scene, which was filmed in Spain in both an outdoor tank in Alicante, and an indoor tank in Cuidad de la Luz Studios. Watts and Holland spent more than 45 days being doused by more than 35,000 gallons of water.

“It was very time-consuming because after each take, they’d have to empty the tank of the debris and we’d have to start all over again,” says Holland. The debris, for the record, looks very realistic but was made of light-weight rubber.

For the scenes in which Holland and Watts are pulled along by the currents, they were strapped into a teacup-shaped apparatus which moved them down a channel while pumps churned up water underneath them.

It was so physically intense that occasionally Watts and Holland forgot to say their lines.

“Almost as soon as you’d open your mouth in the tank, you’d be swallowing gallons of water, and it was salty water and it would sting your eyes,” recalls Holland.

In the end, neither Watts nor Holland could manage to get many words out.

“We shouted a series of ‘Mums’ and ‘Nos’ back and forth to each other,” says Holland. “We tried to make it as natural as possible because, for us, it wasn’t the most comfortable of experiences.”

Every day, Holland was surrounded by reminders of the real disaster. The film utilized many of the same locations that were destroyed - and since rebuilt - by the tsunami, including The Orchid, the high-end hotel where the family was staying.

“It was quite eerie and spooky,” says Holland. “When I was at the hotel, waiting for the wave to come, I was standing at the exact same spot where the real Lucas was standing when the tsunami hit.”

The hospital scenes were filmed at the same hospital where Maria recovered from a number of life-threatening wounds. And many of the extras were locals who had survived the event.

“The thing about Thailand is that almost every person there has his or her own tsunami story,” says Holland. “It was very powerful, in a way, to be surrounded by the story.”

At one point during filming, the Alvarez Belons visited Thailand. It was their first trip back to the region since the tsunami. The real-life Lucas is nearly 20 now and bound for medical school.

“He saved lives in Thailand, including his mother’s,” notes Holland. “And he’s going to go on to save lives in the future, which is a perfect ending to his story.”

At the outset of the movie, Lucas and Maria are at odds. But as they face one horrific event after another, their bond becomes unshakeable. In a sense, “The Impossible” is the story of how Lucas is forced to grow up and become a man.

“The Lucas at the beginning of the film is a different person from the Lucas at the end of the film,” says Holland. “You see him go from a stroppy teen to becoming the father figure of the family because he imagines that his father and brothers are dead. And he needs to protect his mum.

“I can’t personally imagine anything worse than my mum being scared and me having to look after her. Lucas did that. He overcame that fear. He went on the longest journey I can even imagine — and he did in seven days.”

In contrast to Lucas, Holland has always been very mature for his age. Before landing in “The Impossible,” he spent 18 months playing the title role of the London production of “Billy Elliot.”

For two years prior to his stage debut, he trained to be a singer and a ballet dancer.

Since “The Impossible” wrapped, Holland shot his next role in “How I Live Now,” a thriller about an American girl (Saoirse Ronan from “The Lovely Bones”) who must fight for survival in Britain after World War III breaks out.

Holland might be only 16 years old but he’s already made his mind up about his career path.

“When I was doing ‘Billy Elliot,’ I knew I wanted to do something in the entertainment industry but I didn’t know what,” he says. “But it was on the set of ‘The Impossible’ that the acting bug really bit me.

“I was in the water, hugging a pole and I had supposedly seen my mum die. I had to cry and shout and scream. When the director yelled ‘cut,’ the crew applauded me. It was at the moment that I thought, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’”

About the Author

Amy Longsdorf is a freelance writer who got hooked on movies after catching "The Godfather" on the big screen. She is a weekly contributor to The Mercury's Sunday Living Section writing entertainment features and DVD reviews. She graduated from Cedar Crest College in Allentown with a degree in communications and has written for People Magazine, The New york Daily News, The Toronto Star, Philadelphia Weekly and The Camden Courier Post. She contributed to "Videohound's Groovy Movies:Far Out Films of the Psychedelic Era." Reach the author at movieamy@aol.com
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